Talk:Golden Fleece Award

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Awards

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A fact from Golden Fleece Award appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 September 2012 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that winners of William Proxmire's Golden Fleece Award for wasteful U.S. government spending include the Department of Justice for researching why prisoners want to escape?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2012/September. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Golden Fleece Award.

Wikipedia

Untitled[edit]

There is a complete list of the awards with agencies, projects and Proxmire's commentary on them collected, scanned and accessible on the Wisconsin Historical Society Website. I have added the citation the the references on the article page.--Lavishluau (talk) 08:53, 12 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This article needs some specifics, rather than merely mentioning the names of the purportedly offending agencies. --Thatnewguy 13:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I totally agree. This article might as well read "abbreviated list of government agencies that stir controversy." It is useless without more information. --Jhlynes 21:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I stumbled across this article and began filling in the details, before I realized just how many awards have been given. Many agencies have won multiple awards, the existing list of agencies in the article is far from complete, and a number of these have substantial counterarguments. A complete, verbose list of awards would make this article longer than Longcat. Picking out a single specific award for the existing list would, in the current state, misrepresent the wide range of awards given. The right thing to do here evades me, so I'll let someone else decide. As for the "teaching college students how to watch television", a future editor may find this counterargument [1] noteworthy. ~ Eidako 15:26, 28 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Libel Lawsuit[edit]

No article on the Golden Fleece Award can be complete without mentioning Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111, 99 S. Ct. 2675, 61 L. Ed. 2d 411 (1979). A scientist who had received a research award was given the Golden Fleece Award in a press release from Senator Proxmire's office, and he sued Proxmire for libel. Proxmire's defense that the scientist was a public figure was rejected by the court. Vegasprof 14:02, 9 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The first 2 links under the reference section seem to be dead 212.32.90.182 (talk) 20:50, 30 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative Social Context[edit]

I used to read about this a lot in my parents old collection of "Astounding Stories", and "Analog Science Fiction and Fact" magazine. John W. Campbell, the editor of those publications for many years, argued strenuously that Proxmire picked research that was easy to make fun off, and easy to make political hay out of, regardless of it's actual value. The one example I can recall had to do with research that the "Golden Fleece Award" characterized as about "When Chimpanzees smile", but in fact had to do with research about social queues in Chimp groups, and included data about "smiling".

Of course, John was a bit of a crank, and I don't have the historical context to evaluate whether this was a widely held view at the time, but if it was, it should probably be represented in the article. Blueguy76 (talk) 15:14, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The Other Golden Fleece Award[edit]

There is a crafting society that also has an award of the same name. http://www.goldenfleeceaward.com/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.145.42.157 (talk) 05:20, 19 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why Ended?[edit]

The article indicates that these ended in 1998, but doesn't say why. Can anyone shed any light on this? ProfessorTofty (talk) 06:31, 27 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Aspen Movie Map[edit]

Did the Aspen Movie Map actually receive this award? Multiple sources including the Wisconsin Historical Society [2] and Taxpayers for Common Sense don't have it listed.[3] The only sources I can find that mention it link back to these Wikipedia articles and I can't check the cited article since it requires payment to read. Other discussions seems to indicate this is probably an urban legend. Pm06420 (talk) 04:42, 14 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed by two staffers from project who indicated they never won the award, just runner-up. Pm06420 (talk) 22:16, 15 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Fleshing out the Fleece[edit]

@Fat pig73:, @Muboshgu:, @RFD:, @Auric: Deferring to your collective seniority, Fp's creation of this article and your substantial contributions to it, I thought it appropriate to run my edits by you four with skin in the game, in the event you don't have it watchlisted: For those visitors unfamiliar with the Award, I thought a slight expansion of the lede and a new section, an extremely brief bio of its originator, would be enlightening to those unacquainted with the subjects. I think I've satisfied the Nov. 2016 request for a citation in the lede and reduced a bit of overlinking. I hope my edits meet with your approval. Activist (talk) 05:15, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Activist: An expansion of the lead is just fine. A bio of Proxmire would be inappropriate per WP:COATRACK, I think. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:05, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Golden Goose Award[edit]

Does anybody think the Golden Goose Award should be linked somewhere? It seems to be a direct response. --Hob Gadling (talk) 16:33, 19 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Disagreement between sources on price of Great Wall[edit]

Of the two newspaper sources for the Great Wall of China planned to be built in Indiana, one provides a figure of $20,000, and the other $200,000. Is one of these sources considered more reliable than the other? Is there other sources to support one of these figures? South5432 (talk) 00:46, 23 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/2058563/proxmire_fleeces_bedford_wall/ https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jqcaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Yy8EAAAAIBAJ&pg=6680,3317353